It would be great if it actually worked correctly…
If it worked correctly, and they brought back Sentinel where Revalons could be marked as fam sentinel and clear 35% or lower players, that would be perfect. But a fully functioning 35% rule is just a huge potential exploit…
I have a tiny one planet empire in my fam… I can send to planets in an enemies core to take, have him send to the same ones… let him take from me after I capture, and nobody will be able to retake from him because his NW is too low … then let him portal, jump big, and kill the other fam. This scenario is why sentinel was added, and also the reason why the 35% rule was removed when sentinel stopped working for some reason.
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You’re asking a donkey to chase a carrot here pickle
You’re *
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Thanks for the feedback guys. For clarity though:
This is almost accurate, but not quite.
The sentinel tag didn’t “stop working”; it was consciously removed as part of Stefan’s 2015 morale rewrite, which also included the removal of the 35% rule. These things happened together; one didn’t lead to the other.
As many of us know, that morale rewrite was a disaster, and was reverted awhile after the ownership transfer.
Unfortunately, the whole mess left us with some unintended bugs, including problems with the 35% rule. It was also a partial reversion out of necessity, which is why things like sentinel and op-limit never came back. As with many things, competing priorities have lead to their continued delay.
In any case, the bugs with the 35% rule were tested and fixed about a year ago now. It’s always possible that some bugs were re-introduced. It’s also possible that some bugs weren’t caught during that testing.
So, if we want to improve this we need to do a few things:
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Identify what cases differ from their expected results.
- Gather specific testing scenarios from players who are reporting the bug
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Replicate the scenarios on the dev server
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Identify which scenarios are bugs vs which require feature work.
Specificity is key. “This thing is broken” isn’t as useful as “Here is a specific scenario that needs to be evaluated”. @Lord_Pickle’s post above contains a good example of how to describe a problem, which would fall in the “feature work” category as it is more of a feature design issue than an actual bug.
@WhoFlungDung and @OrBit, do you have any specific details that we can use to help with test cases?
Thank you.
I think @WhoFlungDung was frustrated because he was being hit by @Lord_Pickle. Pickle was about 7m networth and whoflungdung was 1.8m. It seems there could be a bug somewhere there but how could you find something if it’s fine 4 out of 5 times? It could be tested though easily enough.
As for the sentinel post from @Lord_Pickle. I agree, it was put in place to remove exploitation and was a very good feature of the game. If there was a way of bringing this back it would only be a positive thing.
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If it is not repeatable it is not a bug, it is user error
Or at least that is how it should be. It maybe there is additional factors that you haven’t nailed down. If it is a bug then it is repeatable, you just need to get all the right conditions.
You, of course, also have to have good faith to want to fix the thing…
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what does any of that even mean?
@I_like_pie What Orbit said… I was being hit by pickle who was 5x my NW. I never once attacked or opped him. He said at the start of war he couldn’t attack me. I did some retakes carefully making sure not to retake from Pickle and then he was for some reason able to attack me after that.
Could be just a coincident. Or perhaps I retook some planets that at some point we’re Pickles and that allowed him to attack, which I would call a bug. Or maybe I have no idea how the 25/35% is supposed to work.
If the 35% rule is intended to work family wide like that it needs to be clarified… If not it’s broken.
This is not the only incident of the 35% rule not working for me. A few rounds ago my planets were being blown up and I had made zero offensive moves at that point in the round. Yet my family could not attack the other fams small guy. I may have even posted that in bug forum and nothing was ever done.
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This is a lot of leg work to put on the community … aren’t you able to just look at the code and see how it is set up? I don’t mind reporting bugs, but if I have to launch an investigation, I will just ignore them.
I wish it were that easy. 
No though, the code itself is kinda “static” and doesn’t reflect edge cases. Bugs in particular often times require this type of troubleshooting.
The request for the community is only #1 though, as part of making more detailed and useful reports. You, @OrBit, and @WhoFlungDung have already done this now and it’s super useful.
I would be responsible for #2 and #3.
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Try working in a software company where there is a whole team dedicated to QA and bug hunting… Pie is being nice doing 2&3
If Pie doesn’t do 2 and 3 then who does? Pie is doing #2 and #3 out of necessity. While he frustrates me sometimes because my expectations are/were higher than he is able to deliver, I am thankful he purchased the game and is at least making an effort, it is more than I could do. I get the appeal of brown nosing but this is Pie’s baby, he isn’t doing 2 and 3 to be nice, he is doing it because it has to be done.
I mean, if you worked in a software company then you as the reporter of the bug would be expected to do a first pass on 2&3.
At the level of players here, we almost are just a software company, so feel lucky that Pie doesn’t see it like that. I would actually argue we should move to a more community involvement, which also means more responsibility on the community and less on Pie, thus reducing the pressure on him
You guys are both right tbh. Any frustration from players lately is definitely warranted, but community involvement also helps our progress.
I’m not entitled to anybody’s time/effort to help, but we all benefit from volunteers doing what they can.
We’re out of our recent slump, and both positivity and constructive criticism will keep us on the upswing. 
How much is @I_like_pie paying you to follow every forum post and make a comment @You_Fool
I am paid in cookies to follow you 
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Pies
I don’t, this isn’t a software company.
We’re not. Employees of software companies get paid.
Should have just stuck with this … none of that software company nonsense makes any sense.
If players want to put time in and help the game and Pie then great, but it should not be expected or required.